Doctors Affirm Kennedy Autopsy Report

By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN

Published: May 20, 1992

Correction Appended

Breaking a 28-year silence, the two pathologists who performed the autopsy on President John F. Kennedy have affirmed their original findings that he was hit by only two bullets, fired from above and behind, and that one of them caused the massive head wound that killed him.

And four of five other doctors who attended the President in the emergency room of a Dallas hospital said they observed nothing while treating him that contradicts the pathologists' findings. They also criticized another doctor in the emergency room that day, one whose new book asserts a conspiracy to cover up evidence that the President was shot from the front, not the back. Some Questions Answered

The two pathologists, who were Navy medical officers at the time of the autopsy, and the five other doctors have not previously discussed the Kennedy assassination, except before the Warren Commission that investigated it. They made their assertions in interviews reported in the May 27 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association.

In the interviews, the doctors offered answers to several questions about the assassination and its aftermath, including the nature of a throat wound Kennedy suffered; whether the new President, Lyndon B. Johnson, demanded that doctors extract a confession from Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin, when Oswald was treated in the same emergency room after being shot two days later; what happened to the original notes of the autopsy and whether Kennedy's body might have been interfered with en route from Dallas to the Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., where the autopsy was performed.

Dr. George D. Lundberg, editor of the journal, said the interviews were the result of a seven-year effort to "help calm the ardor of the honest conspiracy theorists who have simply not had access to the facts."

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, said through a spokeswoman that he welcomed "these authoritative medical opinions, and I hope they will help to end the irresponsible speculation that has been taking place and that is so distressing to our family."

Dr. Lundberg and Dennis L. Breo, who interviewed the doctors for the journal, described the responses at a news conference in New York City yesterday. The doctors themselves did not appear and, Dr. Lundberg said, they do not want to be interviewed further. A third pathologist involved in the autopsy, Dr. Pierre Finck, now lives in Switzerland and declined to be interviewed for the journal articles. Documentation 'in Spades'

The two pathologists, Dr. James J. Humes and Dr. J. Thornton Boswell, said there was no doubt about the nature of the gunshot wounds to Kennedy and denied there had been any interference with the body by military or political officials, a major contention of conspiracy theorists. The pathologists, who retired from the Navy in the late 1960's, said the bullets were fired by a high-velocity weapon.

"We documented our findings in spades," Dr. Boswell said. "It's all there in the records," which include X-rays from head to toe and 52 photographs.

Dr. Humes said, "No significant aspect of the autopsy was left unphotographed."

"In 1963, we proved at the autopsy table that President Kennedy was struck from above and behind by the fatal shot," Dr. Humes said, adding, "I am tired of being beaten upon by people who are supremely ignorant of the scientific facts of the President's death."

The autopsy results have been independently confirmed several times.

The two pathologists and many other medical experts agree that some of the questions raised about the assassination would have been avoided had the autopsy taken place in Dallas, as required by Texas law. No autopsy was performed there, the journal articles say, because security officials were anxious to get the new President back to the safety of Washington and Mr. Johnson refused to leave Dallas without Mrs. Kennedy and she refused to leave her husband's body behind. New Sources of Questions

The interviews follow a new wave of conspiracy charges raised by Oliver Stone's movie "J.F.K." and a book, 'J.F.K. Conspiracy of Silence" (Signet, 1992), by Dr. Charles A. Crenshaw, who was a junior member of the medical team that tried to save Kennedy's life at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.

Among Dr. Crenshaw's charges is that the bullets struck Kennedy from the front, that Kennedy's wounds were altered between the time his body left the hospital in Dallas and the autopsy in Bethesda, and that his body was received in Bethesda in a body bag, not a coffin.

While the two pathologists have been criticized as lacking experience in gunshot wounds, they rebutted these and other charges in the journal articles, saying that in their Navy service they had autopsied people who had died from gunshot wounds.

But a spokeswoman for Dr. Crenshaw's publisher said the doctor stood by his account. Referring to the journal articles, she said: "It's the old party line. The American public is still being manipulated." 'No Body Bag Anywhere'

The pathologists said they were not aware of Dr. Crenshaw's book at the time of their interviews. Speaking to Dr. Crenshaw's assertion that Kennedy's body arrived in a bag, Dr. Humes said that he and Dr. Boswell lifted the body from the coffin directly onto the examining table. The body was nude and swaddled in sheets, he said, and Kennedy's head, brutally wounded, was wrapped with gauze and bandages.

"There was no body bag anywhere near the scene," Dr. Humes said. "I cannot imagine how this talk about the President's body being delivered in a body bag got started, but it is absolutely false."

Dr. Humes said his team did not need to use a saw to remove the top of the skull, as is usual in autopsies, because the bullet that killed the President had blown out about 5 inches of skull, bone and skin.

When Dr. Humes peeled the scalp back, he said, the skull bone "crumbled in my hands from the fracture lines, which went off in all directions."

The pathologists said the first bullet entered the back of Kennedy's neck and left through the front of his throat. The second bullet entered the back of his head and exploded the right side of it, destroying a major portion of the brain.

After examining the inside of the rear of the skull bone and piecing together what they could of the remaining brain, the pathologists said, there was no question where the bullet had come from: rear to front.

The first shot left an "abrasion collar where this bullet entered at the base of the President's neck," Dr. Humes said, "and this scorching and splitting of the skin from the heat and scraping generated by the entering bullet is proof that it entered from behind."

The pathologists said they were temporarily baffled about the exit wound, which was obliterated when the surgeons in Dallas had cut through it to create an airway for Kennedy.

In his book, Dr. Crenshaw said he saw a small, round wound in Kennedy's neck in Dallas and a gaping wound on a photograph of Kennedy's neck at the autopsy, suggesting that the wound had been altered between Dallas and Bethesda.

Dr. Humes said, "We found a gaping wound in the front of the neck where the tracheostomy had been performed, and if Dr. Crenshaw was correct, the only possible explanation is that the neck wound was intentionally enlarged while the body was en route from Dallas, and the insinuation of this scenario does not deserve a response." Lack of Communication

Dr. Humes said confusion about the exit wound would have been avoided had he and his colleague telephoned the Dallas doctors immediately, rather than on the morning after the autopsy, as they did. "If we made a mistake, it was in not calling Dallas before we started the autopsy," he said. "Our information from Parkland Hospital in Dallas before we started the autopsy was zero."

Pathologists generally talk to attending doctors before starting an autopsy. Dr. Humes did not say why they did not call Parkland before they began work.

One element of the conspiracy theory stems from charges that Dr. Humes's original notes disappeared. In the journal report, written by Mr. Breo, Dr. Humes explained that he burned his original set of notes because they were stained with Kennedy's blood. To prevent the notes from ever becoming a ghoulish collector's item, he said, he burned them in his fireplace "after I had copied verbatim in my own handwriting the entire contents."

Mr. Breo said the five Dallas doctors who led the effort to save Kennedy's life told him that Dr. Crenshaw did not participate in the effort in any meaningful way. He also said that none of the five recalled even seeing Dr. Crenshaw at the scene.

Mr. Breo said that he did not try to interview Dr. Crenshaw and that the doctor was not mentioned in the Warren Commission's summary report. An Inconsistency in Account

But the full report makes several references to Dr. Crenshaw. In two of them, Dr. Charles R. Baxter and Dr. Robert McClelland, two of the Dallas doctors interviewed by Mr. Breo, told the Warren Commission that Dr. Crenshaw was in the emergency room.

The Dallas doctors and Dr. Lundberg, who is also a pathologist, said in the journal that they suspected that Dr. Crenshaw wrote his book for personal gain. Dr. Lundberg said the book was "a sad fabrication based upon unsubstantiated allegations."

Dr. Baxter also denied knowledge of any call from President Johnson demanding that the doctors get a confession from Oswald. In his book, Dr. Crenshaw said the President made such a call.

The other three Dallas doctors are Dr. Malcolm Perry, Dr. Jim Carrico and Dr. M. T. Jenkins. Of the five, only Dr. McClelland says the bullet entered Kennedy's throat from the front. But Dr. Lundberg, the journal editor, said Dr. McClelland was not an expert in forensic pathology and ballistic wounds.

Dr. Lundberg also called Mr. Stone's film "skillful film fiction" and "a grave insult to the military physicians involved, among others."

Mr. Stone's publicist said the director was in Europe and could not be reached for comment.

Dr. Lundberg called on the Government to open the Kennedy archives to serious study and "to place the relevant Kennedy materials on permanent display near those of President Lincoln for full viewing by any and everyone."

Photos: Drs. James J. Humes, left, and J. Thornton Boswell, who performed the autopsy on John F. Kennedy, broke a 28-year silence (Dennis L. Breo) (pg. A1); Dr. George Lundberg, editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, said that the interviews with the doctors who attended John F. Kennedy after he was shot were to "help calm the ardor of the honest conspiracy theorists who have simply not had access to the facts." (Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times) (pg. B7)

Correction: June 9, 1992, Tuesday An article on May 20 about the autopsy of President John F. Kennedy included an erroneous reference from The Journal of the American Medical Association to the history of statements by the doctors who performed the autopsy and others who treated him in the emergency room. Some of them spoke previously in public about the matter; they were not breaking a 28-year silence.